A Gathering of Spies (27 page)

Although Hagen was only a few feet away, Schmidt was unable to make out his face. He could only wonder how his stand had gone over.

Nearly half a minute passed. Then Hagen said, “You are right. It does not make sense to risk the boat.”

Thank God
, Schmidt thought. “We will send the dinghy to shore,” he said. “Two men will look for the signal. If they see it, they will make contact.”

“Indeed. Those two men shall be
Herr
Gruber and myself.”

Schmidt managed not to grin. “I will prepare the dinghy immediately,
Herr
Hagen,” he said.

FLAMBOROUGH HEAD, YORKSHIRE

In the dream, the bullet passed through her shoulder and lodged in the wooden doorjamb and she barely felt it and she was fine and life went on.

But in reality, the bullet was still inside her.

She could feel it every time she pulled herself up another stair. It was wandering around inside her body, prodding at the muscle and tissue and skin from the inside out. Sometimes the pain of the shifting bullet would become so fantastic that she would actually lose consciousness for a moment. She was on the verge of losing consciousness anyway, between the stairs, the fever, the exhaustion. But it was the bullet in her shoulder that kept pushing her over the edge—kept pushing her into the dream even when her attention was sorely needed here, in reality.

In the dream they were leading her to the gallows. Fritz held one of her arms, and the old fat man held the other. Both were smiling at her with expressions of condescending pity, or perhaps it was pitying condescension. They were walking to the gallows between throngs of British citizens who were howling for her execution. Even the children were howling. The children, it seemed, were howling loudest of all.

Then thunder broke and she found herself back in reality, halfway up the staircase in this goddamn lighthouse, bleeding, sobbing, unable to continue.

She pulled herself up another stair.

The fact that she was climbing the tower in the first place illustrated just how poorly she was doing. She should have gone the other way, outside, to the beach. Then she could possibly have given the signal, somehow, and perhaps even gotten some help from reinforcements.

She had kicked up at the old fat man, from the bed; the gun had barked twice. One of the bullets had slammed into her left shoulder, spinning her around. A lucky shot. She had rolled off the bed, rolled onto the floor, and kept rolling. Not realizing yet that the bullet was still inside her. Before he could find her in the gloom, before he could fire again and finish it, she had slipped away into the corridor.

And stumbled in the wrong direction.

There had been a time, she knew, when her training would have gotten her through the worst of the shock, when her reflexes would have proven sound. Even in bad circumstances she would have acted correctly.

It's not too late
, she thought.
You still have a chance to make things right
.

Yes—because her body was an instrument, and she was its master.

She forbade her body to pass out again. There were things to do, in reality. Like climbing this staircase, like killing the old fat man, like staying alive long enough to tell her secrets to the crew of the U-boat floating at this very instant off Flamborough Head.

She pulled herself up another stair. The bullet moved again in her shoulder. She didn't cry out, but her face scrunched into a mask of agony. For several seconds, the rictus remained on her features. Then the lines slowly vanished as her muscles relaxed—except for the deep groove between her eyes.

She achieved another stair, and then, despite her noble intentions, drifted away again.

She was Catherine Danielson, not yet Carter, getting off the train in Princeton ten years before. Richard was there, coming to meet her. She had seen in his eyes from the very first that he was attracted to her. He was leading her back through the campus, back to his little university house, carrying her suitcase, giving her a tour that felt more like a lecture. A group of young men in frayed gowns was ogling her, but Richard didn't seem to notice. Richard was explaining something about … wages …

But it was the gallows he was leading her to, of course, not the house; no, not the gallows but the … yes, the gallows. How could she have thought otherwise? He was leading her up the stairs, and the crowd all around was chanting. She was frightened, terribly frightened. They were going to kill her, these people. A priest stepped up, unfolding a piece of parchment. The priest charged her with espionage. Then he named her—her real name. Her given name.

“Heinrich,” he said.

Except she was back in the lighthouse again.

“Katarina Heinrich,” the voice repeated, and echoed.

She blinked, sucked in a pained breath, and pulled herself up another stair.

“Katarina Heinrich,” the man said yet again. His voice, warped by the acoustics of the tower, sounded hollow and otherworldly.

“That is your name, isn't it?” he said. “Katarina Heinrich.”

How many more stairs to the top? She couldn't bear to think about it. She pulled herself up again.

This time the dream was different. This time she was bounding up the stairs, whole again, capable, perfect, hiding in the vat of mercury. Deadly poison, mercury, but in the dream it was harmless; and in the dream she sank into it easily, like a bath. In the dream she killed the fat man when he stepped into the gallery, flinging the knife in her hand with deadly accuracy, skewering him through one eye.

The knife. Did she have it?

She opened her eyes. Looked at her hands. No, the knife was only a dream.

Thunder exploded again, farther away. The storm was moving off.

She decided, suddenly, that she was dying.

Not over yet
, she thought.
Not over yet, God damn it
.

She managed another stair.

In the dream, it was the last stair. She had reached the gallery. The final dregs of the storm were beating at the windows. A slash of lightning illuminated old Rupert, facedown, floating in the mercury bath beneath the tremendous Fresnel lens. In the dream she dragged herself halfway across the floor and then collapsed, utterly spent. She could no longer feel the bullet in her arm. The arm had gone numb.
Dying
, she thought. She felt like a very little girl who had stumbled into a Grimm fairy tale, with the storm trailing off outside, the bogeyman coming up the stairs behind her, and nowhere left to run. It was cold up there. The middle of the summer, but somehow it was cold up there. Or perhaps the coldness was inside her. The numbness had spread from her arm to her chest. Perhaps it wouldn't stop at the boundaries of her body. Perhaps her last act in this world would be to bring the coldness out, from her body to the world … Oh, but she had hoped for fire. She had hoped to bring atomic fire out into the world, instead of cold. But there was no fire to be found.

“Not … dreaming,” she muttered.

It was true. This was no dream; it was reality. And if she died now she would never bring fire to the world, only cold. And so she could not lie there on the floor. She needed to get moving. To find a weapon.

Her body was an instrument, and she was its master.

She tried to sit up, to get moving again, and her body, politely but firmly, refused.

She collapsed again, with a small sob.

In the dream, then, she rolled over onto her back to wait for him to come. He was directly behind her on the stairs, after all; probably being overcautious—he didn't know how badly she was hurt. But any second now she would see his shadow looming on the wall as he reached the top of the stairs.… Why, there it was now … in the dream … he was coming for her … she wished for poison. If she had possessed a poison capsule she would have swallowed it. Better death than capture. Or would this man kill her?

He came into the gallery.

He looked as frightened as she felt. His eyes were darting into every crevice, as if she had some last trick, some last spectacular trick, hidden up here. He must have heard about Highgate, she thought.
He must think I'm dangerous, even now
.

But there was nothing she could do as he slowly came into the room, the pistol in his hand pointed at the crease between her eyes.

“Katarina Heinrich,” he said.

She nodded, or tried to.

In the dream, then, his finger was tightening on the trigger. Not going to arrest her after all. He was going to kill her, right there and then. Not weak, this man. Hard. Willing to do whatever it took. She could respect that.

In the dream, then, Hagen came to her rescue. He emerged from the staircase behind the man, the same old Hagen, gaunt and rangy and encased in sheer black, which he wore only when he was working. In the dream, Hagen was holding a Luger, which he pointed at the old fat man's head. In the dream, Hagen said, “No, please.”

Which was a funny touch for a dream, she thought. Of course, Hagen's English was not particularly good, and of course, that
was
pretty much the way he would speak, were he to speak in English at that moment. But since his role in this dream was as savior, as
deus ex machina
, she would have thought that he would have been forgiven his deficiencies in English. She would have thought that he would have spoken flawlessly.

The old fat man froze.

“Set down the gun,” Hagen commanded.

The old fat man bent, carefully, and set down his gun. He raised his hands over his head.

“Take two steps back, please,” Hagen said.

The man took two steps back, hands still raised. Katarina watched, bemused. Not such a bad dream, she thought. She wondered if she was dead yet. Not such a bad way to go out, with a nice dream like this. If only Hagen would shoot the old fat man in the head, everything would be perfect.

But Hagen wasn't shooting him.

“Professor Winterbotham?”

The man nodded once, shortly.

“My name is Hagen,” Hagen said. “This is Gruber.”

Katarina saw, then, another man behind Hagen—a mousy little man who emerged from the shadows, looking excited.

“Professor,” Gruber said, mincingly. “On behalf of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, please accept my invitation to return with us to Berlin immediately.”

Katarina closed her eyes. She felt confused, and extremely spent. What was going on? What was this odd turn her fantasy had taken? Who was this mousy little mincing man?

When she opened her eyes again, Hagen was crouching next to her, examining her shoulder. He saw her eyes open, and the ghost of a smile traced his lips.

“Katarina,” he said. “You came home.”

Katarina nodded.

“Rest,” he said.

She nodded again.

She closed her eyes.

And rested.

18

The car rumbled to a stop in the fog.

“What is it?” Taylor asked, leaning forward.

The driver cleared his throat before answering. “I believe this is it, sir,” he said.

“This is what, Fitz?”

“
It
, sir. As near as I can guess.”

“The lighthouse?”

Fitz nodded.

Taylor leaned forward even farther, trying to peer through the windshield. “Can't see a bloody thing,” he murmured.

“The road ends just ahead.”

“Can't you pull up a bit?”

“There's no road, sir. I can drive on the grass, if you like.”

“Hold on,” Taylor said.

He threw open his door and marched past all four cars in line, rapping on the windows. They formed a huddle in the misty night: Taylor, Kendall, Colonel Fredricks, and two men from the Criminal Investigation Division of Scotland Yard, called CID.

“We're here,” Taylor said. “We just don't know it yet.”

Colonel Fredricks was frowning into the night around them.

“Bloody hard to see anything in this soup.”

“I'm aware of that, Colonel. Unfortunately we've no time to spare waiting for it to lift. Does everybody have a sidearm?”

They all had.

“We'll make straight for the beach,” Taylor said. “Once the beach is secure, we'll send a party back to the lighthouse. By the time our contingent arrives from Whitley Bay, we'll either have them in the lock or cut off with their escape route blocked.”

“Sir?” Fredricks said.

“Colonel?”

“What about Winterbotham?”

“What about him?”

“What are we to do if we run into him, sir?”

“What do you think?” Taylor said, checking the load in his pistol.

“But …”

“Any
sensible
questions?”

There was none.

“God be with us all,” Taylor said.

They struck off toward the beach in two groups.

Taylor led the first, with Colonel Fredricks on one side and Kendall on the other. They passed an abandoned Sunbeam Talbot—Winterbotham's car, Taylor realized suddenly, although he hadn't seen it for years—and then angled left, away from the lighthouse.

The two from CID went to the right, around the lighthouse's other side.

The ground was marshy and wet. It squelched softly with their footsteps. The fog stole the sound as soon as it was made, spreading it thin. When Kendall spoke, the same thing happened to his voice: “Sir,” he whispered, “a path. Leading down the cliffs.”

It seemed to Taylor as if the voice was coming from all around him. When he tried to look at Kendall, he could see nothing but a smudge among the rest of the haze.

“Where?” he whispered back.

A hand touched his.

“Come on,” Kendall said. “I'll lead you.”

Taylor reached out to his left, to take Fredricks's hand. He found himself grasping at air.

“Fredricks,” he hissed.

There was no answer.

“Fredricks!”

Nothing.

“I've lost Fredricks,” he said.

After a moment, they went on anyway, Kendall leading the way, Taylor holding his hand like a schoolgirl. The path led down a rough, steep cliff that Taylor would not have cared to negotiate even under good circumstances. As they descended, however, they began to get beneath the fog. Soon Taylor could see Kendall in front of him; he let go of his hand. Soon after, they were stepping onto the rocky beach itself, grateful to have avoided sprained ankles or worse. Far out above the black sea, Taylor could see a loose toss of stars very low to the horizon, very distant, in a place the storm had not touched.